In a comment to my post on flu care, Persephone asked me to explain what I meant when I said â€œIâ€™m not a big fan of the body-as-battleground theory of disease.â€

The body-as-battleground theory of disease goes something like this:

The forces of evil (disease) have invaded the body. The forces of good (medicine) shall enter the body and conquer the forces of evil.

This theory sees the body as passive: itâ€™s a battleground in a cosmic war between good and evilâ€”a piece of territory rather than a dynamic, living organism. This theory does not respect the bodyâ€™s innate vitality and intelligence. This theory doesnâ€™t know the body is an ecosystem. This theory is ridiculous.

Sure, microbes are interesting. They certainly play a role in the development of some diseases. But they are in no way the whole story. Exposed to the same microbes, some people get sick and some people donâ€™t. Every ecosystem is different.

Itâ€™s a question of science getting ahead of itself: â€œWow, look at these bad little critters that make people sick. If we just kill them all, everything will be better again.â€ Um, no. Wrong approach. Think antibiotic resistance. Think superbugs.

The story of humans and microbes is fascinatingly complex. It turns out weâ€™re covered with them, inside and out. And it turns out we depend on themâ€”to protect us from infection, to manufacture nutrients, to train our immune systems . . . sure sounds like an ecosystem to me.

darcey blue said,

Isn’t Vitalism wonderful! Thanks for posting on this today. It’s astounding to me how many “natural” healers are still using that model of body as battleground in their healing practices, and just today wrote a bit of a rant on it in my own blog. Commercial herbal preparations are right up there with pharmacueticals to some degree in seeing and creating remedies that support the supression of symptoms and ‘killing the invaders” as healing. Not in my book, and clearly not in yours! Bravo!